Wartime carrier pigeon found in chimney

Pigeon code from BBC News site (link below)

Delighted by today's news that the remains of a carrier pigeon have been found in a Surrey chimney, with the red canister still attached. (Not so good for the unfortunate pigeon of course). According to Colin Hill, who looks after the Pigeon Exhibition at Bletchley Park, the message is unusual because it is in code not longhand. GCHQ are now tasked with decoding it. See the report by the BBC's John Maguire here. A photograph of the bones and the code can be found here (thanks to Bletchley Park Research).

Further pigeon news: War Horse author Michael Morpurgo has revealed that he's writing a story about a wartime pigeon.

And more pigeonry: Dennis da Silva's short film Gustav was premiered on the final day of the Ghost Station exhibition at Bletchley Park (which Station X was part of). The film is based on the story of the  pigeon that delivered the first message of the D Day Landings at Normandy on 6th June 1944. 

An update to the chimney pigeon story from the BBC News site, December 16, 2012. 

100 year old aerial photographs taken by pigeons

An image by Julius Neubronner and one of his pigeons (1908)

Image: Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0

Julius Neubronner with pigeon and camera (1914)

Image: Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0
 
An unexpected outcome of working at Bletchley Park is my huge affection and admiration for the wartime pigeons and those who worked with them. Stephen Messenger has written this article for Treehugger about the aerial photographs he obtained using carrier pigeons, with several examples.

Meanwhile we're still waiting for news about when the Station X exhibition will be reopened.

Six days left to see Ghost Station

Rachael Marshall, Documenting Blocks C and D II, Bletchley Park, Ten projected photographs, 2010-2012. 

The Ghost Station exhibition will be closing this Sunday, 30th September. However, Station X, which includes my photographs, will remain in Hut 8. 

Ghost Station features the work of 23 artists, all inspired by different aspects of Bletchley Park and its wartime work. 'Gustav', a film about a wartime pigeon by Dennis Da Silva, will be shown at 2pm on Sunday, as part of the closing party for the ArtHertz show. 

It was great to meet many of the artists on the opening night. Here's a list of them, with links where possible: 

Hannah Elizabeth Allan
Hannah Rae Alton 
Angelo Cerantola
Al Croseri
Dennis Da Silva
Elizabeth Dismorr
Bradley Hayman 
Birgitta Hosea
Lloyd Hughes
Hannah Hull
Esther Johnson 
Adrian Lee 
Gemma Marmalade
Fleur Melbourn 
Catrin Morgan 
Paul Matosic
Ingrid Plum 
Julia Roach 
Colin Turner 
Station X (that's Caroline Devine, Maya Ramsay, Luke Williams and me).

Station X in the Teleprinter Room at Bletchley Park

Rachael Marshall, Creep, Block C, Bletchley Park. Acrylic mounted photograph, 16 x 24 inches. 2011.

Station X is now installed in the Teleprinter Room in Hut 8, Alan Turing's hut. It's currently part of Ghost Station, the ArtHertz exhibition for Milton Keynes Heritage Open Days, but will remain in the room on a loan to the Bletchley Park Trust's collection. 

Thank you to everyone who attended the Private View last night, including Councillor Catriona Morris, Mayor of Milton Keynes. It was great to meet some of the other 20 artists who are showing work inspired by the unique history of Bletchley Park. Also huge thanks to all the staff and volunteers of Bletchley Park, ArtHertz and everyone who assisted us with the tricky installation; securing artworks and AV equipment in a listed building is not easy! Special thanks to Dad, whose first post-retirement project was plinth-making, Pete, for stepping in with various tools, Gary for loan of equipment (and a tutorial in using it) and Mussy for last-minute help with wiring and nerve-calming.

Also, huge thanks once again to our supporters PMC Speakers and the Milton Keynes Community Foundation: installing Station X at Bletchley Park could not have happened without your help.

We've already had some lovely comments from people who saw the show last night - a testament to what a strong team the four of us are. Me getting stuck inside one of the projector plinths was just one of many funny moments from this week. Luckily no-one took a photo of that.

Finally I have a chance to catch up with the rest of the country and watch The Bletchley Circle! 

Ghost Station at Bletchley Park

Ghost Station flyer by ArtHertz

Ghost Station is the new exhibition from ArtHertz, staged at Bletchley Park - the home of code breaking during World War II and the birthplace of modern technology. The month long event is part of the Milton Keynes Heritage Open Days - Summer of Culture 2012 and explores themes of codes, code-breaking and messages, Alan Turing, the role of pigeons and women in World War II. The exhibition also explores the ongoing ArtHertz agenda of the analogue / digital distinction. Ghost Station will also include the critically acclaimed collaborative piece, Station X (featured on BBC Radio 4) - an installation that documents the Bletchley buildings with sound, film, photography and surfaces.

Over 20 selected contemporary artists' work will be interspersed amongst the museum's exhibits in Hut 8, the Bombe Hut and Hut 11. The Enigma Cinema at Bletchley will also play host to screenings of short films curated by Rushes Soho Shorts Film Festival and ArtHertz presenting the UK Premiere of Al Croseri's feature length film,The Pigeoneers, Esther Johnson's 'Analogue Kingdom' and 'Tune In'. There will also be a closing party and premiere of the war pigeon short, 'Gustav' by Dennis Da Silva on 30th September.

Station X in Hut 8 at Bletchley Park

The bicycle shed outside Hut 8. Photograph by Rachael Marshall.

The Station X work is returning to the place where it was created: Bletchley Park. We'll be exhibiting in Hut 8, which was refurbished to resemble its wartime layout in 2005 and currently houses displays about leisure time for the codebreakers and the heroic carrier pigeons.

Our work will be part of Ghost Station, an exhibition by a range of artists inspired by codebreakers and the site they worked at in secrecy. More information about Ghost Station can be found here.

Review of Station X

Rachael Marshall, Locked, Block D, Bletchley Park. Acrylic mounted photograph, 16 x 24 inches. 2011.

From a review of Station X:

"The combination of the, at once familiar, yet other worldly, sounds and atmospheric photographs of dust, cobwebs and the odd decaying bird, along with the physical ‘casts’ of the walls themselves all give a very peculiar overall feeling."

Read the full review on Paul Caplewell's blog.

The exhibition opened last Thursday and runs until May 27, 2012. 

 

Pigeon fancier

German Camera Pigeon, WWI, licensed under Creative Commons.

 

Poorly pigeon in Block D, yesterday. Photograph by Rachael Marshall.

We've got to know the pigeons of Blocks C and D quite well while working at Bletchley Park. There's a group of three, one brown, one white and one grey, that is always in the room next to the 'rat room' in C, on a ledge in a corner that gets a chink of sunlight through gaps in the window hoardings. You get used to them flying around and scurrying unseen in ceiling voids above your head and I like to to think they're used to our visits. 

Inevitably some floors in both blocks are pigeon toilets and graveyards. We really have to watch where we're putting our feet and tripod legs. Tiny eggs, mostly broken, are scattered around too. The deterioration of the dead birds is fascinating once you're over any squeamishness. Yesterday I found a near-perfect skeleton in a corridor, arranged as if it was in flight. The beautiful full-feathered wings of a white bird looked like they'd been left behind by an angel. 

Caroline told me about the little chap in the photo above when I arrived yesterday. He'd been in the same spot for a few hours, barely moving, just blinking and panting. Later on in the day a shaft of sunlight came through the skylight and this seemed to revive him (or her?) a bit. He moved around a bit and reacted more to my presence. I doubt he'll live long and it was awful to see him suffering.

Pigeons were crucial to intelligence operations on both sides during the first and second World Wars. Bletchley Park has an exhibition about them in Hut 8 and you can read more and see some photographs inside Hut 8 here, on Alan and Pat Machin's site. Perhaps the pigeons of Blocks C and D are descendants of the wartime birds? 

(Bletchley Park staff are aware of the poorly bird - seemed a bit daft to tell them when the place is littered with bodies, but horrid to see an animal struggle).

Station X flyer

Station X exhibition flyer

Station X exhibition flyer

The dates, times and venue for the Station X exhibition cannot possibly change now that the flyers are ordered, and if anyone spots a typo on this I really don't want to know!

We're very pleased to have the support of both the Milton Keynes Community Foundation and PMC Loudspeakers.

MK Gallery Project Space Exhibition

Caroline and Maya outside the Milton Keynes Gallery Project Space. Photograph by Rachael Marshall.

The Station X Exhibition will be at the MK Gallery Project Space from May 4th to June 3rd 2012. Details of the gallery can be found here: MK Gallery Project Space. Looking forward to seeing you! 

Click here for more information about the artists and their work.

Architectural histories: Block C is listed

Three pigeons on a ledge inside Block C at Bletchley Park. Photograph by Rachael Marshall.

Histories is the title of a module taught by Professor Colin Davies at London Metropolitan University's Architecture School that I took a few years ago. Referring to the history of a place, person or idea now seems wrong to me because any account of an event in the past is more revealing of contemporary values and attitudes than those of the time of the subject.

I mention this for two reasons. Firstly, I watched Enigma over Christmas for the first time since I saw it after its release in 2001. Anyone who knows Bletchley Park would spot immediately that the mansion house is not the real one. According to the IMDB this is because "Bletchley Park did not look enough like Bletchley Park to the production company to have been used in the film". More controversially, the main character Tom Jericho's achievements at Bletchley Park are obviously based on those of Alan Turing but Tom, who has a relationship with Kate Winslet's character in the film is not Alan, who despite an engagement to a co-worker, was homosexual. 

Enigma set out to tell a story and was inspired by historical events but not bound by them. I remember reading somewhere that good fictional dialogue is not achieved by writing in the way that people actually speak; to read a section of text written in this way is likely to be dull. Good dialogue needs flow, drama and pauses, but people in conversation meander, interrupt and hesitate. For a complete understanding of the true history of the codebreakers (or any history) perhaps we would have to invent time-travel and revisit not just the moments of drama and intrigue but experience moment-by-moment the painstaking and repetitive hard slog of the decryption process. That would be fascinating for a short time, but not a way to tell an engaging and powerful story. 

I've mentioned before that I think I was aware of the code-breaking activity at Bletchley Park before Enigma was released but for me the film brought to life the seriousness and importance of the work. I happened to watch the film with an IT enthusiast who explained the inaccuracies as soon as it was over, and I expect that these were widely debated in the media back in 2001. The story in Enigma therefore prompted interest in the Bletchley Park historical activities for many people who may not otherwise have heard of it.

I began writing this with the intention of comparing the idea of histories with story-telling and the UK system of listing and preserving certain buildings because Bletchley Park Block C joined the other remaining buildings in being Grade II listed last week. The story of Bletchley Park's buildings continues, and with it the  histories of the codebreakers, wars and education. That's enough about the listing process for now. The pigeons will have a home until funds are raised for the restoration works. 

Work produced by Caroline Devine, Maya Ramsay and myself will be on show in the Milton Keynes Gallery Project Space in May 2012. Details are here.

Station X - a collaboration

Rachael, Caroline and Maya in Block D, Bletchley Park. Photograph by Rachael Marshall.

• 
  

• The Station X exhibition is no longer at Bletchley Park.

• Interviews with the artists and reviews of the exhibition

Station X is a collaboration between an installation artist, a photographer, a sound artist and a film maker that documents Blocks C and D at Bletchley Park prior to their renovation.

Bletchley Park is also known as Station X, ‘home of the code-breakers’. Eleven thousand people worked there during World War Two and were sworn to secrecy about their activities for the following 30 years. It is also the birthplace of modern information technology.

The artists documented some of the derelict Grade II listed buildings in which the code-breakers worked, which have always been inaccessible to the public due to their dangerous state of disrepair. Conditions are harsh in rooms that have been unventilated and occupied only by pigeons and rats for years. Some of the buildings give the impression that the workers have just downed tools and left; a rusty old coat hanger swings on a hook with a name scrawled on it and a file of technical information disintegrates on a window sill. Others provide fascinating insights into what happens when nature is left to its own devices for years.

After decades of decay and a successful fundraising campaign the buildings are now being renovated.

Station X provides a sensory insight into the disused buildings and the remnants of their secret past. It offers a contemporary interpretation of what is arguably one of Britain’s most important 20^th century historical sites. The exhibition documents the visual and aural histories imbued in the buildings before their renovation. 

Caroline Devine is a sound artist who captured the sounds produced by and within the decaying huts. Caroline is interested in voices that may be obscured, silenced or absent such as the employees at Bletchley who were sworn to secrecy for 30 years after the war. 

Rachael Marshall is a photographer who is particularly interested in the reasons why we value and preserve certain buildings. 

Maya Ramsay is an installation artist who makes works using a process to lift pigment, debris and texture from surfaces in the built environment, in particular from buildings that are due to be demolished or restored. Maya specialises in making works that reference war through the associations that abstract marks can create.

The work of Luke Williams involves film, carving, construction and installation practices. Luke produces devices which co-exist with the space in which they are placed. He is interested in the narratives and reinterpretation of science.

Exhibitions
November 7th 2012 – September 2013 – Hut 8 at Bletchley Park
September 6th to October 6th 2012 – Ghost Station at Bletchley Park
May 3rd to June 1st, 2012 – Milton Keynes Gallery Project Space